True Crime at St Joseph Public Library

On Feb. 19, the East Hills branch of the St. Joseph Public Library hosted an event, retelling stories of true cases that occurred in St Joseph, MO.

One of the promotional images advertising the true crime telling at the East Hills St Joseph Public library on Feb 19th. Several people attended the story of 1900s era crime in the old city of St Joseph MO.

One of the stories told the tale of W.F. Weymann, a known doctor and professor at Central Medical College, and his lover Edith Hinnen. Their story included things such as affairs, institutionalization and public outcry.

The story concludes with tragedy as Edith Hinnen committed suicide on Jan 17, 1903, in the offices of W.F Weymann, with newspapers publishing headlines such as “The wages of sin is death,” to bolster public opinion against Weymann.

The empty seats in the East Hills library prior to the event. On Feb 19th. As 6pm rolled around these seats easily became full of attendees interested in hearing true cases from St Joseph.

Another story tells the tumultuous story of Roy Swisher and his acquaintance Eva Williams. From Swisher’s brief time as a career criminal, with crimes such as grand larceny to perjury, to Eva Williams’ past of shooting spouses.

Swisher’s story ended when he was fatally shot by Williams in 1944, and Williams was found not guilty in a court of law. Williams continued to live her life and remarried until she passed in the mid 1980s.

Marina Trifan, presents a headline showcasing flowery journalism which informs the public about Edith Hinnens suicide, with the headline reading “The wages of sin is death”. Many such headlines were popular with exaggerated texts to spark public opinion at the time.

Jan Wildhagan, the manager of the downtown branch of the St Joseph Public Library, shared her thoughts.

“I always love when there’s a local angle to the whole thing because, you know we hear about murders and crime all over the country, and what I really like is that it wasn’t so recent that I was afraid I had knew anybody, so you know they did those terrible things but they don’t touch me personally and that’s great,” said Wildhagan.

Patrons at the true crime telling, enraptured by the story of life, death, and love which occurred in the city of St Joseph. Many patrons fixate on the journalism at the time and the morbidity of it all

Marina Trifan, another member of the downtown St Joseph Public Library, shared her thoughts on her experience.

“Just kind of the drama of it, and the flowery reporting of the time, I think it’s just an interesting kind of media of these time periods,” said Trifan. “Kind of a similar answer, I think it is an interesting way to view events of the past to see that some things don’t change as much as they do, and some things change a great deal.”

Overall, the True Crime telling was popular amongst spectators willing to hear real historical cases from St Joseph and people just interested in crime stories alike. These stories show that people throughout history are just that, people.

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